I was thinking about how I grew up extremely religious, and started to wonder about other atheists and their experiences with the trappings of religious practices.
Please choose whichever best fits, and please also post more if you feel comfortable doing so.
I’ll post more about what I was specifically thinking about once the poll seems to be going - I don’t want to skew the results by my atrocious ideas. 
Many thanks!
My family never did much of that; singing Christmas carols, setting up a tree, holding Easter egg hunts was about as far as the ritual aspects went. If we ever went to a church for anything other than Sunday School I don’t recall it. And personally I don’t enjoy rituals at all, religious or otherwise.
Religious rituals have always made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I was not raised religious and I always feel like an outsider. Growing up, I witnessed a full body water-baptism in one of those huge watertanks on a stage. I felt weird because everyone else was going hallelujah-nuts and I didn’t feel like I was part of it. Another time I witnessed my aunt and her family receiving communion. Again, total outsider, totally uncomfortable. Back then I wasn’t even openly agnostic or atheistic. I had some vague belief in a god-figure and I maybe prayed every couple weeks when I wanted my parents to stop beating each other or hurting me–it never worked (lol) which is largely responsible for my conversion to atheism. I had as much success from prayer as I did from hugging my teddy bear and asking it to help me, and hugging my teddy bear was more emotionally satisfying than asking an invisible guy for help.
Since I could think critically in my tween years, I was always uncomfortable with and constantly-questioning with regard to faith and open ritualistic displays (except for stuff like putting up Christmas decorations, which I’ve become unhappy with doing only recently–I don’t mind seeing them, but I don’t want to put them up).
Since I’ve openly declared my atheism in adulthood, I want religious rituals as far away from me as possible. My mom has invited me to several pagan functions in the past few years (she converted from non-religious to neopaganism when I was around 19). When I lived with her after dropping out of school, I let myself be talked into participating in a couple of rituals(including when her friend had a pagan wedding). I still felt uncomfortable; in fact it was worse because neopagan rituals are so ad-hoc and carried out by people who are less professional about it than, say, a Catholic priest.
Since then, I put my foot down and either slept in the car during ritual, or refused to go. I also don’t like participating in informal ritual traditions like putting up christmas lights or trees, though I don’t mind seeing others do it.
My mom seems to think that I shouldn’t have a problem participating in a ritual which I think is patently ridiculous. Well, I’d rather be enjoying myself. Fuck you! If someone asked you to take communion with them, you’d probably object on personal grounds the same fucking way.
nm
I think religious rituals are creepy, for the most part. Especially the Catholic prayer thing where the whole church parrots things after the preacher…it’s so cultish and strange.
However, I don’t consider decorating for Christmas a religious ritual, and quite enjoy that, so perhaps it’s a matter of definition.
I’m kind of like you in this, rachelellogram. I find it difficult to be around religious rituals that I don’t believe in. As a secularist with neo-pagan tendencies, it’s interesting to read someone experiencing neo-paganism the same way I experience my friends’ Christianity.
It took me a long time to realise that there are social aspects to every church and temple.
To me, as a first approximation, if you don’t believe in a faith, you shouldn’t take part at that faith’s ritual. I always felt bad when I was asked to share in some Christian affirmation that I didn’t believe. I don’t like lying about stuff like this.
I never understood how my nominally-atheist (I think) friend can go to his wife’s church and all when he doesn’t believe it. I mean, yes, there’s the ‘support one’s spouse, that’s what marriage means’ and all, but the spouse has gotten a LOT more religious lately. Maybe he believes now?
He clearly enjoys the social aspect. I’ve met a few of the people at that church, and they seem like good people. But at the back of my mind, there’s always a little sprig of awareness of otherness: that these people simply don’t believe the same way I do.
I’m not sure why I don’t have as strong a reaction to Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, etc, rituals. Perhaps this is because I’ve never been to one of their worship services.
A big part of it is that I feel that ‘there are many paths to the goal’, and I am generally less comfortable around groups that profess that there is Only One Way than I am around groups that live and let live.
As for rituals? I passed through a long group counseling course that included a significant amount of internal ritual, and I found that it didn’t matter what the ritual was; it was given its emotional significance by the group, and this made the ritual more powerful for the individual.
This emotional lading, of course, is where the problems start. People start to confuse dissent or disbelief with opposition to the group, because their emotional selves are going, “You’re with us or against us!” and eliminating any options for “I’m not even on the same game board!”.
Emotions make bad public policy.
I voted that I didn’t grow up religious, which is true, but my family is historically Catholic, and I went to church until I was around 4-5 years old or so. Never had first communion or anything like that. I observe Christmas decorations, mostly at the insistence of my wife; my reluctance has less to do with my atheism than I think decorating for a holiday is nothing more than a monumental pain in the ass. I think Christmas should be moved from the end of December to the middle of winter, when it would do more good, but that’s another post.
To stay on topic, religious rituals, such as the aforementioned Christmas decorations, or attending a wedding in a church, etc. don’t bother me. I’d be more than happy to not participate, but when I do, it’s for friends (like attending a wedding–I won’t spontaneously combust or cry out in revulsion if I enter a church; I’m not a Bela Lugosi vampire after all), or my family (my wife likes to decorate, my kids are like me…it’s fine if we don’t).
I grew up Jewish and my partner grew up Muslim . . . so of course we have a Christmas tree every year.
I was raised Catholic until my early teens when my mother became nondenominational and dragged me and my siblings into nutville with tent revivals and faith healing in what I used to call Christian church. Catholic church was bad enough with catechism on Saturdays and mass on Sundays, but it was sedate and orderly. Christian church was an animal of a different stripe altogether, with clapping, wailing, crying, and guitars.
I stopped practicing and attending sometime in my mid teens, and don’t miss it, at all.
Define “ritual”. Most of the ways I’ve heard i used refer specifically to religion or superstitution.
Would you call a pilot going through a pre-flight check list a ritual? I certainly would follow such a ritual if I were a pilot, and there are some less formalized repeated acts I perform in preparation fppr some of my job duties.
But these are real-world actions that need to be performed in order to carry out a task safely and efficiently. I personally wouldn’t call them rituals.
I would say that a ritual is an act that provides some psychological comfort but not other tangible benefits. Hmmm… once in a whole I buy a lottery ticket.
My parents were missionaries. I don’t really miss any of that. I guess the semi-secular Christmas eve service with candles that might have burned the church down was kinda ok and singing xmas carols.
I spent a lot of time in Tibet, and just loved their rituals. Something about being awoken in the dark somewhere over 10,000 feet in elevation to the sounds of great horns echoing across the valley, walking in the cold dark 4:00 am morning with “big sky” stars extremely bright overhead and the mummering of other people going towards the great hall, entering the great hall with rows of monks doing the tantric chanting in Tibetan, backlit by the soft glow of hundreds of yak butter lamps, steam rising off of the closely cropped heads of the monks, acolytes wheeling out big ol honking vats of yak butter tea, the head reincarnate lama riffing on a theme, and the sun slowly coming up and the temperature slowly rising to something above freezing, the village coming to life in the background, parishioners gradually filling the great hall. Man, it was fucking great. That’s a ritual and a half but not one I’ve found replicated in spirit anywhere else…
That’s pretty much what I was getting at, yes.
I think most people associate “rituals” with a specific belief system or superstitious whatever, and maybe (mostly, judging by the poll so far) even think of them negatively because of that.
I find myself in a place where I certainly don’t want to practice Christian rituals, or even rituals of any other faith, but I do miss the emotional and psychological resonance of that sort of event.
It’s not even the social aspects that I was thinking of - I don’t think rituals have to be in groups, or publicly done.
What I was trying to get at was to see if anyone other than myself perhaps saw a place for specifically ATHEIST or secular rituals to add to their lives. I’ve never heard of anything like it, and wondered if anyone had.
I voted for “I didn’t grow up religious and I don’t think I’m missing out on anything”, because it’s true.
However, I’ve been to a few religious rituals that I thought were nice. I like singing Lecha Dodi at Friday night services, I like having apples in honey at Rosh Hashana, I like the Passover seder. They’re nice rituals. But I don’t feel like there’s something missing in my life when I don’t partake in them.
Ritual = barbaric
Participating in a religious ritual is childish. An invisible man loves us?? We thank him for a team win? To magically cure world hunger?? When someone says “bless you”, I tell them I’m offended. I certainly don’t need a blessing from an invisible, homicidal maniac. And there’s no plague right now…
I didn’t like any of the choices listed for the poll. Atheists don’t need rituals for not believing in something. Should we have a ritual for not believing in unicorns?
Seeing friends and loved ones on a regular basis is ritual enough for me. 
I think you’re missing the point a little. If the ritual is carried out knowing it’s purely dress up and make believe then it stops being barbaric and starts being fun. This is the function that rituals serve in organisations like the Church of Satan - the people carrying it out don’t actually think the ritual is going to do anything, there is no supernatural element to it, it’s just for fun the same way amateur dramatics is.
Rituals exist in all organisations and cultures, regardless of whether they’re secular or religious. They have a powerful impact on us, to dismiss them as merely barbaric and irrelevant is to miss the purpose they can serve when used right.
Totally agree.
There are rituals for atheists - I’ve been to secular baby-naming ceremonies, weddings and funerals. They don’t invoke the supernatural, but they’re still rituals.
I have always maintained that there is a place for a communally shared marking of significant events in the secular life. It’s not about an invisible man, it’s about the symbolic co-experience of births, marriages, deaths etc. within the community of people that surround the individual/s. It has a useful societal and psychological benefit.
And I say to atheists who won’t participate in ‘standard’ religious ritual at all, if someone significant to you wants to get married in a church, then go to church for this important stuff. It’s not about the sky pixie, it’s about publicly acknowledging an event. You can even sing the hymns - go for it - because the words should mean nothing to you. By refusing, you’re ironically imbuing said institution with some kind of mystical power.
I’ve been to a few religious (mostly catholic, but also some protestant) gatherings for things like weddings, baptisms, funerals etc. Only a few times did I think the religious aspect of it was not annoying and useless or worse. I really don’t think I’m missing anything.
I’m not sure it counts as a ritual, but I always really enjoyed the music portion of a worship service. The music is beautiful and there is something very calming about singing hymns (or doing the accompaniment) with a group.
I picked “grew up religious and don’t miss it.” The thing is, though, while my parents were religious (Episcopalian), even as a little kid I didn’t buy it. They would drag me to church every Sunday, and I detested it. I only got two days a week where I didn’t have to go to school, and they made me waste half of one of those days in some stupid ceremony that I didn’t want any part of!
Once I got to be about 15 or 16, I put my foot down and said I wasn’t doing it anymore. My mom agreed, as long as I’d still go on Christmas Eve and Easter. Fine, I thought, that’s a good enough compromise, I can suffer through it twice a year. She held me to that until I was 22, when the minister retired; I used that as my excuse to tell Mom I was DONE. Since then, I’ve only set foot in churches for weddings, funerals, or some business purpose like making a delivery.
As for why I hated church so much… because it was f’in boring. Yeah, the service was only an hour, but when you’re a kid that seems like an eternity. When I was younger, I’d go off to “Sunday School” for half of it, which wasn’t as bad - it broke up the monotony a bit. But by the time I was 11 or 12 I had to start sitting through the whole ceremony… it was torture.
I guess my mother was trying to instill some sense of religion or morality or whatever in me by making me go to church while growing up. It’s not like she’s super religious, she still goes to church every Sunday, but she doesn’t revolve her entire life around religion like many people. By forcing me to go, her plan backfired, making me hate it with a passion. If she’d given me the choice, who knows what might have happened? Maybe I’d have come to appreciate it, or even believe (not likely, but you never know).
I made a mistake in my vote because I thought there might be religious rituals I still enjoy but now that I think about it I only enjoy the secular aspects. I hate weddings and funerals and baptisms and christenings. Loathe them really. I enjoy holidays and I suppose some of the religious xmas music but I could live without it all as long as I get my secular tree and food treats I’m good.
At one point I still enjoyed taking my daughter to her very liberal church but we’ve both become too cynical lately to care.